UK ahead of the global pack in technology venture capital growth

Global investment in financial-technology ventures has more than tripled from $928 million in 2008 to $2.97 billion (£1.78 billion) in 2013, with the UK winning a rapidly growing slice, according to Accenture research.

Antony Savvas
March 27, 2014

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Global investment in financial-technology ventures has more than tripled from $928 million in 2008 to $2.97 billion (£1.78 billion) in 2013, with the UK winning a rapidly growing slice, according to Accenture research.

The consulting firm said that over the past three years, such investment increased at more than four times the rate of overall venture-capital investment.

Although the US remains the dominant market for so-called “fintech” investment, the fastest growing region is now the UK and Ireland (UKI). Deal-volume, mostly related to London, has been growing at an annualised rate of 74 percent since 2008, compared with 27 percent globally and 13 percent in Silicon Valley.

During the same period, the value of fintech investment in UKI increased nearly eightfold to $265 million in 2013, said Accenture. The annualised growth rate (51 percent) was nearly twice the global average (26 percent) and more than twice that of Silicon Valley (23 percent).

As a result of the rapid growth in UKI, which accounts for more than half (53 percent) of all investment in Europe, London has emerged as the "fintech capital of Europe", according Accenture.

“The fintech boom is a huge opportunity for London with its well-developed financial and technology industries,” said Julian Skan, Accenture managing director overseeing Accenture's FinTech Innovation Lab London. “It is also crucial to London maintaining its position as the leading global financial centre because of the growing importance of technology to the financial industry.”

Although Ireland has a developing tech industry of its own, said Accenture, it is closely integrated with London’s fintech cluster, by incubating fintech companies that look to London’s large financial centre in pursuit of customers, talent, partnerships and funding.

The Accenture research was based on studying fintech investment-data from CB Insights, a global venture-finance data and analytics firm.